Origin

In the 21st century the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word mobile is probably a portable phone. At least that is the case in Britain—in the USA and elsewhere people are more likely to say cellphone. The term mobile phone was first recorded in the USA in 1945, but it was not until the 1980s that the mobile or cellphone became more widely available, and even then it was out of reach of the ordinary person. A 1984 source refers to one ‘available now with a suggested price of $1,995’. The word mobile itself dates in English to the late 15th century and goes back to Latin movere ‘to move’, the source of move. It started to be used of people's ability to move between social levels at the beginning of the 20th century, and a person can now be upwardly mobile or downwardly mobile. In Latin mobile vulgus meant ‘the common people, the fickle crowd’. English adopted the phrase in the late 16th century, and two centuries later shortened it to mobile and then even further to simple mob. This became a term for a gang of criminals in the early 19th century, and in 20th-century America the Mob became an alternative name for the Mafia.